


What We Are

by An_Ode



Series: Undefined but Understood [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Introspection, Minor Character Death, Minor Injuries, Panic Attacks, Post-Defenders, Post-Punisher season 1, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-02-22 12:42:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/An_Ode/pseuds/An_Ode
Summary: For the first time in their acquaintanceship, friendship, relationship, whatever the hell ‘ship’ this was, she felt herself shut down in his presence. Like a flipped switch Karen could almost physically feel the walls flying up between them. Distance that had never existed settled perfectly into place, like this desolate valley spanning between them had always separated the paralegal and Marine.-Or- All the shit Karen has been through finally catches up with her. And Frank is... well Frank.





	1. Walls

**Author's Note:**

> This ish just flows out of me. This dynamic fascinates me man, cant help it. More to come!

Karen felt a distant echo of guilt as she tuned Foggy’s latest anecdote about work out in favor of spiraling in her own thoughts. The waitress refilled her water for a third time, the dim lighting bouncing off the gleaming ornamentation decorating dining room. Even the cutlery was polished to the point where her reflection was clear enough to reapply her berry lipstick without a trip to the lady’s room. The actual cloth table cloth, fresh flowers at the center of their square table, salad fork and four different glasses next to their respective porcelain plates.

It hurt sometimes, to remember Foggy surrounded by the smoky air of Josie’s. Water undrinkable and customers unseemly. It was a time in both their lives they were each running from- though their reasons no doubt varied at an elemental level. A lawyer underappreciated and underutilized due to his partner’s (as Karen had begun to entitle them) _extracurricular_ activities. ‘Matt’s-penchant-for-putting-on-red-leather-and-beating-the-ever-living-shit-out-of-the-local degenerates’ was just such a mouthful.

“So She goes ‘I’m pregnant with our unicorn baby and we’re naming him Avocado. Cado, for short.’” Karen fixed her wandering eyes on the dubious expression Foggy wore across the table.

“I’m so sorry Foggy,” she dropped head forward, hair skimming across shoulders to obscure her face. “I’ve just been- Christ-“her hands riffled through her hair before they handed in front of her mouth. “My mind is just… overrun.” Sitting up straight she planted herself firmly in her seat. “Tell me what Gregerson Hurbs said about the embezzling charges.”

With one more look her way he plowed right back into the tale of woe he had begun ten minutes earlier. The rest of the night passed slowly, the air becoming stifling as more well-dressed elitist types filled the elegantly decorated hall. People swarmed in, every table full by the time both of them stood to take their leave. Grabbing her ticket stub from her purse, she approached the coat check with a small cackle at Foggy’s undercover insolence as he described another day working for the big wigs. It was truly very tame, more of a sass that he kept a tight lid on around clients, but she knew the importance of believing he was sticking it to the man, so she gasped in awe regardless.

Smiling up at the young woman attending the desk she handed over her ticket gently, eyes fixed on the wall just over the brunette’s shoulder. It was easier- not to look someone in the eye. Easier to move on, easier to be brief, easier to avoid banal chit-chat. Easier to use them as a human shield in the case of bullets flying and deadman switches.

“Karen.” It was sentence all its own, his voice gentle but prodding. “It’s been almost a year since…”  They still didn’t really discuss it- the night he went off to battle and never came back. “Have you been sleeping? You doing okay? And you know, doing more than working twelve thousand hours a day.”

“You’re one to talk super-lawyer,” the remark lost its teeth with the warm affection that oozed out with the words. Turning back to take her coat, she slipped a few bills into the jar and stepped aside to allow Foggy his own coat. He shot her a side glance before chatting up the attendant and Karen couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Apparently he and Miss Cooperate Lawyer’s switch was flipped to the ‘off’ position.

That wouldn’t last long.

“I’m serious. Are you okay?” The look he shot her sent a sting of loneliness down her spine.

“I’m fine Foggy, really, just have this story crowding my brain,” she sent a perfectly pearly white smile, a head duck of bashful embarrassment and he was assuaged.

By the time she got back to her apartment, her feet were numb, her lungs burning from the effort of breathing in the tight dress, and her hair nearly solid from hairspray residue. Kicking off her heels with more force than required, she walked through her apartment, things dropping as she went. Keys in the bowl, earnings on a plate, purse tossed to the table, heels kicked to the corner.

It was getting harder and harder just as it was getting easier and easier.

The world had taken to the Hell’s Kitchen reporter. She was respected, looked to in matters of vigilante justice and cooperate scandal. Doggedly chasing every lead, every source, and every story had caught some people’s attention.

The phrase ‘ _let’s do lunch’_ and its every variation had been spoken to her in the past six months. TV anchors, bloggers, company executives- they all wanted the inside scoop from Karen Page. Whether that was to sniff out if she was getting too close to something they were involved in or trying to score points they may need to redeem later, she was never sure.

The mask fell in place easily these days. On those lunches, dinners, brunches, and breakfasts ‘Karen Page the writer’ was an entity all her own. Autonomous from the woman who scrubbed her skin raw when she was in the shower and slept with a gun under her pillow.

That Karen didn’t imagine driving to the Brooklyn Bridge, pulling over, getting out and pitching herself off the side. There was no hair out of place, no misspoken words or incongruent tonal inflections. This Karen Page was poise and wit and sharp as a tack. She pressed when needed and backed off when appropriate.

This Karen Page was a fucking figment of the public’s machinations.

It was easy to be her for the day. Slipping on the mask wasn’t even a choice these days. Once her front door was locked behind her, the dirty and dank hallway to her left and to her right, she was all grit and intrigue. It was when the door was to her back and spackled walls where to her left and right that it came tumbling out.

Foggy had caught her in a spiral that was more common than she wanted to admit. A Frank Castle Special. A combination of crystal clear memories about that night he came to her, and a crude imagining of the events that could have transpired that night if he hadn’t fled down her fire escape. The picture was always an awkward overlay- real sense memory stacked atop the illusions of an infatuated girl’s imagination.

She felt whole when thoughts stuck to him, hollow when they were ripped away. In the midst of all the world’s fascination with the plucky reporter from hell, his voice kept her steady. Four months had passed since she’d seen him last. The beard was making a comeback and he looked more lost than she’s ever seen him. Their _moment_ had not been on the docket for discussion the next time he was crouched on her fire escape. A run in with a local street gang (right place, right time, ma’am) had prompted the visit.

But ever since then, it had been radio silence- direct and indirect. The city held its breath after his death was debunked, ready to see what the ‘terrorist’ would do next. But just as any story that hit the news stand, this too faded. He was quite for too long- some even suggested it was a hoax meant to scare people into submission about the anti-gun laws they were pushing. Theories circulated and those who were interested (bordering on obsessed) scanned police reports and local articles looking for the Punisher’s touch. They would find nothing, just like Karen had found nothing, because apparently the man saw fit to retire the white skull Kevlar.

It drove her crazy, not knowing where he was. It drove her to rage when she realized he was trying to be ‘normal,’ to reintegrate into society but apparently, she wasn’t a part of that. Their time together- during his trial and everything that came after, started to feel different after that realization smacked her in the face. He had held her close and firm that night, asking her if she understood and stupidly, she had nodded her ascent. Karen was starting to doubt that nod was warranted.

She moved through her kitchen, unzipping her dress as she went.

“Not that I got anything against a show, but I think you might wanna revaluate before continuing the performance.” She jumped five feet in the air, body spinning around like a pistol whip to see the very man she was contemplating so deeply sitting on the edge of her loveseat. With feet firmly planted on her white rug, he hung clasped hands between his spread knees with eyes fixed to the floor.

“God Frank you can’t just… I… what the hell are you doing here?” The zipper was already halfway down her side, the ends flapping open to give a spectacular bit of side boob, she had no doubt it was the reason his eyes were caught on the pattern of her rug.

“Been a while, thought I’d check in on the world renowned reporter I’ve been hearin’ so much ‘bout.” At the sound of her zipper his eyes flickered up to her face with a neutral expression she couldn’t read.

“Ha ha,” the reply was stupid and inarticulate, but she had just played perfectly fine and competent Karen Page for the last fifteen hours and her limit was reached. Without so much as a word, her legs carried her to the bedroom door.

“You look beautiful.” Stopping short, left hand resting on the edge of the door, she turned to look at him over her shoulder.

“I-“ his gaze was fixed on something over her head, not catching her gaze despite her efforts. Oh, she knew that game- she’d just played it. “I’m going to get changed. Coffee beans are where they always are.” And with that she closed the door between herself and the man that made her feel so desperately awake.

Leaning back against the wood, she took a deep fortifying breath before allowing her body to sag in a cacophony of relief and something she couldn’t quite name. Exasperation maybe? Distress? Longing? Whatever it was, the thing rose up from her chest and cried out, trying to reach through her ribs to draw him in closer until it could grasp on tight.

Pushing it down with the strictest inner voice she could muster, Karen pushed off the door and went through the mechanical motions of undressing, putting away each item she wore in its appropriate place. The dress she slipped out of was delicately handled onto a hanger and placed in her closet, a safe distance from everything else. It was a gift from Foggy and cost more than she would ever want to know.

The simple ritual of her nightly route was the only thought she allowed herself in those few precious moments. The smell of coffee was blocked out and that strict voice came back with a vengeance, lamenting the situation and everyone involved (namely her and a mass murderer who put cinnamon in the grounds of her coffee even though he hated it because he knew of her love for the spice).

Changed into comfortable yoga pants (whether or not they did amazing things to her ass was irrelevant) her hand reached for an oversized sweatshirt. It didn’t even occur to her that the thing hid her figure, that it fell mid-thigh and negated the yoga pants effect. She was never more raw or more herself than when she was with Frank. The man could still see through her if she wore a circus tent.

Eventually everything was put away, room tidied, hair up in a bun and the smell of coffee wafted through the door making her salivate. Karen swore she could detect the scent of cinnamon in the air but banished the thought. It was time to face the music, or the man, no matter how desperately she searched for something in the room to detain her further. Opening the door slowly she slid between the gap created, eyes casting around the room in feigned nonchalance.

“I threw in some of that cinnamon shit you like.” He was the most surprisingly unsurprising man she’d ever met. Wordlessly retrieving a mug from her pantry, she skirted around his body. Leaning against her island counter facing the coffee pot, he looked right at home.

“You have a date tonight?” His tone was casual, maybe just a little overly so. Like he was working for it.

“Just dinner with Foggy. We try to meet regularly. Tonight it was his turn to pick the place.” She filled her cup, proud there was no shake in her hands or voice. She got a grunt in response so she soldiered on. “No blood to clean up tonight?”

“Ain’t been any blood in a while.”

“That why you haven’t been around?” The question slipped out before she could reel it back in.

“I was here after the Black Spades thing.”

“That was months ago,” she felt her ire rise.

“I don’t exactly go by a schedule.” He sounded annoyed and it made her furious. Whipping around, she finally caught his gaze.

“I’m not saying you have too!”                                                                                                     

“Then what the hell is the problem here?” She didn’t know how to answer, how to tell him that when he was gone for months, when he made no waves in gangs or cartels she was _terrified_. Terrified he was dead somewhere in a back alley. That he had spiraled into his own depression so deep that he was wasting away somewhere, refusing to move. That he had moved on- without her, without a word.

His distance used to be about keeping her safe, about the fact he was busy as fuck dropping bodies around the globe. Karen understood that, of course she did. But now, now he grumbled something about a group, about the war passing, about moving forward.

She wasn’t stupid. Frank was not one for subtly, he never would be. If there was no news of the Punisher dropping bodies, it wasn’t because he had taken to a new strategy- it meant he’d dropped no bodies. The Black Spades encounter had been more of a fluke than a planned blood bath. Frank hadn’t been active in almost 8 months, and that meant something.

It was a foregone conclusion that he would move on without her one day. The thing she represented in his chaotic life- the calm, settled, sometimes exciting but fairly predictable routine- would become irrelevant when that’s what _his_ life became. She was a place holder for normalcy until he got it for himself.

It was simple math really, he had made a new life that no longer required distance but continued to keep it. Therefore, he didn’t care about her the way she did him. He didn’t _need_ her the way she did him.

The power imbalance made her sick to her stomach, bile crawling up her throat with its burning sting.

Looking back at him in this moment, she took a true assessment of the man that was before her. He stood up straight, shoulders back, arms at his side. _At attention_ her mind supplied the phrase, connecting back to his military training, to his life before the shit storm that marooned him two years ago. And for some unknown reason, even looking back in careful contemplation she would never be able to comprehend why, it was the trigger.

For the first time in their acquaintanceship, friendship, relationship, whatever the hell _‘ship’_ this was, she felt herself shut down in his presence. Like a flipped switch Karen could almost physically _feel_ the walls flying up between them. Distance that had never existed settled perfectly into place, like this desolate valley spanning between them had always separated the paralegal and Marine.

Maybe this was the distance Karen had always known any other _sane_ human being would have put between themselves and Frank Castle the mass murderer. Maybe, though it came at a wicked delay, this was her survival instincts finally kicking in. Looking at him now, she felt the emotionality she had attached to their something-ship receded into the recesses of her mind. In that moment Karen did not see _Frank_ \- war hero, traumatized father, widowed husband- she saw a source.

“There is no problem.” The tone was even, perfectly civil. Eyes till locked, Karen took a sip of freshly brewed coffee.

She didn’t register the taste of cinnamon.

Breaking their gaze she retreated back to her living room, snatching a legal pad off her kitchen table before settling into the couch. Coffee cup on the glass, she settled into the corner of the loveseat he had just occupied. Reaching over the armrest pressed into her right side, she grab the basket tucked under the side table.

His echoing footsteps were always so much lighter than expected. Sometimes she forgot he wasn’t much taller than she, just a few inches in difference. Frank Castle had always been the biggest man in the room- any room. Even when Matt stood there, his presence usually filling Karen’s entire purview, Frank had always somehow been the backdrop that overshowed the man she used to-

“So,” she flicked her eyes in his direction, “you got something for me?” Rooting around in the basket of odds and ends, she looked for a usable writing tool.

“Got somethin’?” his gruff tone did not phase Reporter Karen.

“Well yeah, I figured you showing up in my apartment with all your blood _inside_ your body meant there was a tip I needed to hear.” An uncapped blue pen, the kind you always find around the office, was smashed between the pages of a cryptography book. Taking it out she made quick scratches across the paper to coax out the ink.

“Karen,” his voice was hard, eyes searching. The blonde wasn’t sure what, exactly, he was looking for but he must not have found. The furrow between his brows was prominent. “What’s eatin’ at you?”

“What?” His words were clear but the meaning behind the statement was entirely obscured.

“You been drinkin?”

“My one glass of wine is hardly relevant too-“

“Something happened.” His voice gained confidence but Karen was unsure as to why.

“Nothing happened.”

He was in front of her in an instant, crouched between her legs. One hand landed on the arm rest and the other on the cushion, finger grazing her thigh. Caged in by the Punisher, Reporter Karen watched on as an observer outside herself. His worried eyes scanned her from head to toe.

“What happened?” It was gentler this time though.

“Nothing happ-“

“Don’t you _fucking_ _dare_ lie to me Karen Page,” it was low, infused with a venom that would affect anyone else. But Karen Page was not anyone else. Karen Page was kidnapped on the regular, was beaten and bruised for sport, and was tormented by ghosts and shadows. She was stronger than his tone. Stronger than his apparent indifference that was becoming so much less apparent.

“Mr. Castle, I can assure you-“ she realized her mistake the moment the words were out but his reaction certainly would have cued her in had she been unaware.

Frank careened back, hands slipping until his grip on the fabric of her couch was just fingertips.

“The hell this city been doin’ to you?” He looked distraught, he looked like _failure_ had brought him to his knees. Soon his hands slid from the couch to cup her shoulders, body bowed awkwardly so he was crowding her in. His eyes were so expressive it felt like an intimate moment even without the touch.

This was the Frank Castle that had Karen fighting tooth and nail for his release. The one that drove her to push her own gun into his hand and play human shield for SWAT. This was the man that made her ache so acutely and feel petrifyingly alive all at once. The one she missed like a limb. The one who made her thoughts spiral.

Karen, for the first time in their acquaintanceship, friendship, relationship, whatever the hell _‘ship’_ this was, felt nothing for it. 


	2. Bloom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 16 days had passed. The numbness had not.

_“Karen,” she looked up, eyes blank, smile stiff. She looked into his eyes but didn’t process, not really. There was no gazing, no crinkle at the corner as she tried to figure him out._

She hadn’t seen Frank Castle is sixteen days. He had evaporated into the smog chocked New York City air that night, and he hadn’t come back.

_“Talk to me,” his attempts to coax her out failed. His frustration grew._

Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate. He had come back, she felt eyes on her whenever she left her office and trekked back to her apartment. Once, on a particularly gruesome story she was investigating, there was a cup of coffee on her windowsill by the fire escape when she had been up for 43 hours. It had a hint of cinnamon in it.

_”Look at me. I need you to tell me what happened.” The tone was military through and through. He was awaiting orders- her orders._

So, the Punisher had been back, but Karen hadn’t _seen_ him since that night. He had seen her no doubt. It wasn’t like her schedule was difficult to discern. Although there had been a recent deviation from the norm. A wild card of sorts.

_“I swear to Christ, if you tell me nothing happened one more fuc-“_

_“NOTHING HAPPENED!” She lamented the trip to Ikea now required. She bought those chairs in a set._

She was seeing a lawyer now. Well, after a fashion. The paper was dying off, no one wanted printed news these days. Randel Costern was a well-known cooperate lawyer who had money to burn and an ego masquerading as a bleeding heart.

Ellison had asked (ordered) her to a sit down with the man two weeks ago. He had been a charming, hair slicked back sort of fellow. The three piece suits he wore, no doubt handmade and tailored, could fund Hell’s Kitchen more than whatever Karen could scrape together over the course of her life. The restaurant was sickeningly upscale, like the ones Foggy favored these days.

Costern played the part of an impressed fan-boy. He praised her on the investigative prowess she showed, on the dedication to the stories she wrote. Over steak tar tar and a $1000 bottle of wine, he made every effort to win her over. Maybe it would have worked two years ago, but that was then.

Regardless, he invited her back to his top floor penthouse and she declined. It was labeled a _business meeting_ , she had reasoned. _This was not a date_ she went on and he had the reaction she wasn’t surprised by but had been hoping to avoid. As most self-deluded “alpha male” types processed this type of dismissal, he took it as a challenged.

Which was why it was four in the morning on Saturday and she was just getting back into her apartment, thoroughly fucked by New York’s only lawyer paying for actual paper newspapers.

Karen felt the burn of his stare all the way home. Had her week been any different, or hell, had her _life_ been any different, she may have felt the shame he was apparently trying to drill into her bones. But it wasn’t different. Avocados at Law was still a memory, Matt was still dead, Foggy was halfway a cooperate drone, and Karen hadn’t felt real emotions in months.

So honestly, when she unzipped her dress and stripped bare before closing her curtains it didn’t occur to her that him watching should influence her routine. The looseness of her muscles was already starting to fade and the slight ache between her legs was starting to settle in. She smelled like sex and her hair felt like a flashing beacon of promiscuity. She retreated to the bathroom.

Flicking on the shower she avoided the bathroom mirror, as was becoming her habit. Combing out her hair, brushing her teeth, and removing her makeup was done clinically, her thoughts quite in the aftermath of chemical release. The water finally got hot and she stepped under the spray.

Flashes crept behind closed lids. Hands clenching at her waist. Fingers dug painfully into her hair. Teeth breaking the skin of her neck and shoulder. His grip bruising as she lay trapped beneath him, hips bracketing her in. Her nails scoured his back and his arms as she gave as good as she got but he didn’t budge.

Powerless. That’s what these flashes made her feel, powerless. Society roared against it, people marched to abolish it, and no one in their right mind would ever want to be in such a positon. Karen Page had fought her entire life to never feel the way she did after her brother’s death. A woman alone in New York was dead if she allowed herself to fall into that feeling. Struggling through the mire of preconceived notions, prejudice and bias to escape it, and now- it was the only thing she craved.

The choices she made were simultaneously her own and the city’s. Like any other piece of property- they owned her. Owned her words and her thoughts. The stories she told were because the city wanted to read them. She was being crushed under the weight of obligation and she didn’t want to be responsible any more, she wanted to be helpless. You don’t blame someone who’s helpless, and maybe, just maybe, Karen wouldn’t blame herself for a change.

None of it mattered. It was a moot point because were no teeth marks on her neck or her shoulder. No bruises were blooming on her hips and thighs. Her nails didn’t ache from ripping down sweat soaked skin. The ache was dull, the sex had been even duller. Costern was ego-centric but he was far from an alpha male. It was average, maybe even slightly above average to the rest of the populace, but not Karen. The release of chemicals had lasted ten seconds at the most.

No, the flashes in her mind were not memories, they were fantasies.

She just wanted to _feel_ , she wanted to fight the ever present numb she couldn’t escape from. Something was building inside of her, she could feel it. It was like the distant din of the city when she went camping as a kid. A background noise, a TV on in the apartment down the hall. Indistinct but ever present. Costern wasn’t going to be the one that turned the volume up, she knew that.

She also knew who could.

The water had gone cold but Karen didn’t move. Her stare was lax, looking at nothing. The spark was gone, dull eyes and slack body. She felt like a doll, stuffed with straw and face painted. She killed a man. She shot him over and over and over. She shot him and she would do it again.

There is some special trip wire you run into inside your own head when you become death. Karen had hit it with bold forward bound steps. No hesitation, no pause, just an explosion from every direction. Careless, that’s what she was- that’s what she’d always been.

 _You were careless Karen!_ Her mother's voice was screeching at her. A perfect recording caught on tape in her hospital room. Her brother was dead and her mother was rightfully blaming her- she'd killed her own brother.

_Careless, careless, careless._

“Easy there,” it didn’t snap her back into reality, his voice. Her eyes were slow in refocusing, adjusting to having another person in her space.

The water had stopped. She hadn’t noticed.

Soft fabric from her towel draped across her shoulders and chest. Brown eyes were fixed firmly on her own blue. They didn’t stray, they didn’t dip. Here she was, on display and it held no interest for him. How gentlemanly of him, to be so obviously uninterested. Frank Castle, the man not interested in her body, or in her for that matter.

Karen had a fleeting thought. Had he seen another woman naked since his wife? That question sparked another- had he been fucking someone else? Had he found a nice brunette, someone with curves and no tragic past, someone that was a clean slate, not an unwanted reminder of his failures?

For the first time in months, something sparked in the desolate corner of her mind. It was small but it was red hot, like heated metal melting through the stone wall of her psyche. He was speaking, but all focus inward. And then suddenly, the texture of the towel was vivid, the chill from her damp body and cool air, that stupid ache, it was all in Technicolor because she _finally_ puzzled it out.

“Karen!” Her nails had dragged across his arm before she could comprehend it. The skin didn’t break, but scores of red lines were left in their wake.

Rage. That’s what was burning in her chest, making her heart beat and hands shake- _rage_. At herself, at him, at the city, at Matt and Foggy and the Avengers and the world as a whole. All of it, all of the trauma buried under the wreckage of her sanity was crawling out of the rubble- slithering up to overtake any rational thought.

He caught her wrists as she drove them towards his face, nails out. The towel was lost to the bottom of the tub as she threw her body weight against his hold. Sound was coming out of her mouth, ragged angry sounds, like a cornered animal lashing out at a predator.

“Karen, its Frank!” He said it like that would make this better. Like his name didn’t hurt to hear, didn’t coax a flame from nothing in her chest until it consumed her whole.

“Get out! Get out! _GET OUT_!” The likelihood of the neighbors actually calling the cops when hearing a disturbance was low, but the rage and anguish in her voice would give even the most roughened of New Yorkers pause.

She was shaking now. Body trembling as she raged against his hold. Trapping her wrists to the center of his chest, Frank pulled her into him and flush against his body. She was shaking and screaming but her hands caught between them gave him room to engulf her in his arms. The struggle didn’t move him but it did make him clutch on tighter. They stood there as she slowly ran out of steam. His shirt was soaked through and her legs were covered in goose bumps, damp hair almost ensuring a cold was caught.

Finally, Karen settle.

Her cheek was pressed against his sternum, eyes glazing back over as what little fight he had sparked died out. The rigidity of her arms gave way to limpness and her spine curved down as he held more of her weight. It fled so quickly, Karen was sure it would have caused them both whiplash.

“You good?” It was his gentle tone, the one she imagined he used with his family when they were whole and happy and together. It was odd to be addressed with such a voice, made her caring muscle memory wonder what he saw her as- a child to take care of or a woman to partner with.

And then his body was gone and the cold assaulted her fully. The shiver was instinctual and unavoidable. Arms folded around her middle in a feeble attempt to protect from the draft. Eyes open but sight elsewhere, she jumped when gentle fabric ran over her shoulder and down her arm.

“Get dry and get warm,” and then he was gone.

With mechanical movements she stepped out of the tub and dried her body off with quick swipes. The bathmat under her feet absorbed the water that dripped from her hair. Scratching from the towel and indistinct plop of water droplets hitting the wet rug lulled her further. Noticing for the first time there was her oversized sweatshirt and comfortable sweatpants on the toilet lid gave her pause.

Slowly she turned towards the bathroom’s now slightly ajar door. There was a soft puddle of lamplight flooding in from the bedroom but she guessed the living room was still dark. Her brows pulled together. He wouldn’t still be here, would he? His presence was like picking at a scab, a pain forgotten then razor sharp, bleeding out all over her bathroom tile.

“You comin’ in here or not?” His voice was gruff, anger and what Karen thought was nerves. But that couldn’t be right.

Slipping on the cloths he laid out, she turned towards the steamed over mirror behind her. There was just a grainy outline. A vague shape of her but nothing clear enough to see features. How fitting- it matched how she felt about her soul at the moment.

“Page I swear to Christ,” the warning tone snapped her out of her wonderings. She turned without a second thought and headed into the bedroom.


	3. Shattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have a talk. It could have gone better.

She dreamt about Matt a lot, if she dreamt at all. Usually it was just them at Nelson and Murdock’s offices. A normal day with a normal start- clients and coffee and paperwork and no air or no heat. They would discuss cases and eat bartered food while Foggy waxed poetic about pie.

It was the only time Karen felt remotely at peace, and dare venture- _happy_.

That was what Matt Murdock made her feel. In the short time, because in retrospect their time together was so terribly brief, he made her feel a lot of things. But in the early days just after Fisk and before Elektra he made her feel so warm. In the funniest irony, she thought him a gentle soul. Karen is sure she’s never misjudged someone so horribly.

Looking back on their last interaction, there at the police station, a wave of shame hits her. She tumbles around in it, unable to break the surface so she’s just thrashing, choking on her own failures. Of all the people in the world, it should have been _her_ that understood. How many times had she praised Daredevil? After he saved her life the man in black was idol like in her mind. There was no doubt Matt knew of her slight infatuation, her eternal gratitude for what his alter ego had done.

Yet somehow, when she found out the man behind the mask was an actual man, a real person with failing all his own, she shunned him.

Living with that rage inside you, she knew what it was like. Karen had always seemed like a gentle soul to those around her. She wasn’t blind- blonde hair, skinny as a pole, she looked fragile and that assumption ultimately led to several bullets being discharged into someone’s chest. The rage was not new, it bloomed inside her, consuming her until there was nothing left but a dark seething heat in her veins.

Matt had that, and he honed it through training. But despite it, in equal measure he had a sense of duty. He loved just a deeply as he felt that rage. Maybe his target was a lot less in focus, Karen’s wore glasses and morphed into a bald head and dead eyes. But Matt saw something more, he saw the big picture.

So who was she to judge his choices? To try and separate him from work she praised? To bisect him and make him choose to live only in her world, what she desperately wanted to make _their_ world.

 _Careless. You’re always so careless Karen_.

“You aren’t going to ask?” She sat against her headboard, covers pooled at her waist and eyes straight ahead.

“Nah,” he had pulled the stuffed chair from her living room and pushed it next to her bed. She felt like a victim befallen some tragedy, now bedridden and hospitalized and he, Frank Castle, was her visitor.

“You’ve seen me naked.”

“I didn’t look,” Karen finally turned to send him a pointed look. He gave one of his half smiles and turned his head away, “much.”

Pushing the covers back down to the end of the bed she pulled her legs into her chest and rested her chin on top. There was a dichotomy in how she felt about Matt and his death and the way she felt when she thought she would die. Frank had been present during both.

She hadn’t seen him after Matt’s death, not for months. But he was a constant in her mind and his presence a lurking possibility. Some part of her clung to the fact that at least one of the vigilantes she knew was alive. She followed his progress as best she could. His MO was second nature to her now, the reporter could spot a Punisher shooting from a hundred paces.

“When I thought Luis was going to set off that bomb,” her eyes were forward again but she saw him straighten in his chair out of the corner of her eye. “I felt… nothing.” He stayed silent so she went on.

“I thought… I thought I would be scared or, or reject the idea. You know- denial and all that. But I didn’t. I was just… resigned I guess.” A hand came up and fingers raked through her hair as she settle into that truth. “I guess I figured, how many times could I really escape death? No one’s luck is that good.”

“That ain’t luck Karen.” She looked towards him, looking for something. His frustration seemed to grow. “You think because, what, because you’ve been through some shit and come out the other side you’re runnin’ low on luck and the next psycho you face you’ll be KIA?”

“My odds are-“

“You’re odds mean shit.” He was in her personal space now, head following her’s like the night she saw the echoing loneliness she felt every day and called him on it. “You’re a survivor Karen. It ain’t about luck or shit odds. You’ve got somethin’ nobody can teach you, you were born with it. So the next time someone’s got a piece pointed at you or straps you to a god damn bomb, you’ll make it out. You’ll live because that’s what you do. You’re a survivor. You got that?” He had his hands hovering around her head, fingers curling to be closer to her hair, her cheeks, but he never touched.

Frank had touched before. The kiss on her cheek still burned when she thought of it.

His words were meant to be a comfort but in actually, they felt like a dead knell. Because Karen was tired of surviving. Tired of being alive and having to attend funerals. Tired of zipping up her black dress and pulling her shit together enough to go outside and celebrate a life she was once a part of.

How many times did she have to stare death down before it got over its pussy ass and just took her too? Death was easy but living, that shit was hard. Living was fucking impossible these days. But the way she was now, a hollow creature stealing oxygen and moving among the crowd like she was actually one of them didn’t really constitute as living.

It wasn’t for a lack of trying. A switch had been flipped in her and she had no idea how to turn it back on. There was nothing that got her out of bed in the morning aside from engrained routine. It wasn’t to make anyone proud. It wasn’t to please Ellison or be a voice to the muted of Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t for recognition or the feeling of accomplishment that came with a good story.

Obligation drove her, the lack of alternatives. She existed merely because she didn’t know what else to do.

“Karen,” his voice was soft and she turned to look at him.

“I need a favor.” Her voice was flat but he took it in stride because he was Frank Castle. “There’s something I need to see and it’s not the easiest place to break into.” His brow raised.

“You need me for a B&E?”

“More or less.” He shifted back into the chair, legs splayed with arms hanging off the side of the arm rests. “Tomorrow night, if you’re free.”

“I find you catatonic in the shower and now you want to smash some fuck-ups window in and snoop around. Am I your guard dog now?”

“I thought you weren’t going to ask.” Side stepping the guard dog comment she stared him hard in the eye.

“Well shit Karen, I thought you’d give me something.”

“Don’t act like I owe you anything.” The words came out with more bite than she intended. He gave her a sharp look.

“Don’t get pissy on me because fucking some stranger in his penthouse has you skittish.”

She sputtered. Karen honestly thought he would let it lie, wouldn’t bring it up. He sat there in his relaxed position, her ancient second-hand chair a throne under him. As if her moral failing rivaled slaughtering countless people where they stood.

“How is my love life relevant to the story I’m working on?”

“Does it count as a love life when you can barely stand the guy?”

“This is none of your business.”

“I would have asked you earlier, if he had done something to you. But I know you Karen. I would have heard gun shots before he had his hand down his pants.” She was out of bed and across the room in seconds. With an impressive amount of force she yanked the door to the living room and held it open.

“Get out.” He didn’t move a muscle.

“You yelled that loud enough to shake the building earlier and here I am.”

“I wasn’t in my right mind. Now I am.”

“You aint. I think that’s the problem.” He stood with his predatory grace and stalked towards her, shoulders hunched.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” A hand stayed on the edge of the door but its grip tightened until knuckles drained of color.

“It means ever since our little _spat_ in your kitchen shits gotten weird round here.” He mocked the word ‘spat’ relentlessly after her article on a senator with tentative ties to North Korea. She found his use of it now 100 times more infuriating.

“I’m enjoying the detail there Frank.”

“You know what I mean. Don’t play dumb blond with me.” He was in her face now, a vibrating energy in his stance that made her twitchy in direct response.

“I’m not playing-“

“That’s all you’re doing! You run around town like your shits together but it’s not. I know it’s not. You’re here on your little couch and pretending you’re fine but you look like something been ripped outa ya. And you’re just sitting here bleeding out.”

“Well maybe it did! Maybe the shit storm that is my fucking life got to me!” She released the door and retreated towards her kitchen. Muscle memory had her reaching for tea, something to calm down the shakes in her hands.

“Where’s the lawyer kid? We had this talk Karen. You hold on with both hands and-“

Her mug shattered. The tremors ran from her fingers up her wrists until the grip on her favorite mug faltered and it slipped from her hands. It continued its winding journey up her arms to her shoulders until her whole frame trembled. Bowing her head Karen looked at her hands.

“Careless. You’re so careless Karen,” the words came out as a mumbled mess. She was sobbing again. Apparently she did have more in her.

“Karen-“ she jerked back from his hand, bumping her hip hard against the counter top edge. “Karen, where’s Murdock?”

“Dead.” It was all she could get out before vomit crawled up her throat. She stumbled past Frank and on coltish legs darted for the bathroom. Throwing the door open with too much force, it hit the wall and bounced back, leaving it half open. Yanking the toilet seat up she empty the meager contents of her stomach.

It was mostly bile, burning on the way up. Despite what little food she had that day, the gags kept coming. Oxygen was hard to take in when her whole body was pushing out. Gasping breaths left her as she tried to get enough air to breathe.

“For Christ sake, breathe Karen!” His hands gripped her waist when she started to fall forwards. She was choking on her own stupidity, on her own failures. They were many and they were vast and there was no up and no down, just his words. Echoing, echoing in her head.

 _This is my life Karen_.

Her back slammed against the tile wall. She couldn’t tell who was shaking, Frank or her but it felt like maybe he was shaking her. The blood pumping in both ears blocked out any sound, any words directed her way lost in the irregular beat of her heart. She was tired. So fucking tired of this.

Her brother was gone. Matt was gone. Foggy was slipping away. Frank was irregular at best. She didn’t have friends. How much can a person lose before what makes them, them, is gone?

Karen was pretty sure she had just answered her own question.


	4. Sparking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is snooping, then there is the beginnings of a knock-down, drag out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I re-watched Punisher with my roommate last week. It reminded me I had this story on my computer. I went back to watch Karen and Frank from Daredevil season 2 and was massively inspired. Their fight will continue into chapter 5, but for now, I need to set up a little mystery. Every story needs a backdrop for all the crazy shit going down inter-relationally. 
> 
> Reviews are life.

He stayed with her through the night. It was silent between them, his mouth firmly shut after the shit that went down in the kitchen and bathroom. She sat there, sobbing on the tiles, memories of Matt running through her head. They had morphed into the horror story of her brother’s death. She saw Lewis once, watched in slow motion as his body was ripped apart by the homemade device he’d constructed with his own hands.

When she woke up, he was still there. The Punisher resting in her armchair at her bedside. There was surely something poetic about that, but she was in no mood to suss it out. Karen would love to say that, yes, even Frank Castle looked peaceful in his sleep.

Instead, it was a hard no.

Frank Castle looked poised for attack even in unconsciousness. A small flicker of sadness sparked in her chest for a moment. By the time it was recognized, it had burned itself out.

She rose without a word and headed for the kitchen mechanically. It was a quiet affair, but not consciously so. He could continue sleeping or wake, either option had very little sway on her movements. The sound of shuffling and then a low curse floated to the kitchen just as she’d flipped the coffee machine on.

“Coffee will be ready in ten,” her voice was horse from disuse, but she didn’t care enough to clear it.

“It’s Saturday,” the annoyance was stark, and it made her own flare.

“I have a house to case.”

“Case?” She reached up to grab two mugs, ignoring the shattered porcelain in the sink she’d neglected to clean up the night before. “What is this, 1987?” Two months ago, she would have valiantly defended her choice of _lingo_ (another word he would rake her over the coals for) but that was then, and this was now.

“I’m going to change,” as replies went, it was low on the bar. She went to pass him, but a hand came up to grab at her arm. It was instinct that made her flinch back, but it was concern that flashed across his face.

It wasn’t like that first night (he’d mentioned that ‘ _shit had gotten weird_ ,’ her play at ignorance had been weak- Karen knew exactly what he was talking about). There was less urgency pouring from him. There had been a wildness to his insistence that night. A caged tiger pacing, biding its time until it was set free to attack whatever it was that had hurt her. At many points in her knowledge of the Punisher, that had been a comfort.

Now it was an inconvenience.

There was this look about him in that moment, like he was trying to see into her soul, to glimpse what exactly it was he needed to say to get the response he wanted from her. In a corner of her mind, from the small lockbox that held what little bit of sanity remained, a little cry of help echoed. If she knew what words would unlock it, let her out, let her be human again, Karen would have begged him to say them on repeat. Just like always, Karen Page was ignorant, so she looked closer at Frank.

Sleeping in the chair had done him no good it seemed. The red rimmed eyes and circles under them stated that plainly. It was searching now, his look. For a moment they weren’t standing in her living room at 6am on a Saturday morning, peaceful and uneventful. Instead, they were in an elevator. Emergency stop pulled, sirens and alarms blaring, blood trickling down the side of her face and Frank… well Frank was looking at her like he was now.

“Whose place we headed to?” Karen almost smiled in relief at the easiest question he could have asked.

“Do you happen to have a non-descript vehicle we could use?” Though it didn’t answer his question, it seemed that he would take any sort of reply.

“Yeah, saw one two blocks down,” his smirk was almost boyish. That something in her flickered again, shorter than the last though.

“Good. I’ll be ready in ten.” By the time she was checking through her bag for everything she needed, her phone buzzed. A two-word text from an unknown number.

_Rides here_

The drive was longer than Karen was used to. They were headed upstate, a bit out of the city. There was a town house set into her Google Maps, the occasional direction being the only sound in the cab for nearly twenty minutes. He finally broke the silence.

“Tell me why the hell we’re driving to upstate New York at 6:30am on Saturday,” so tell him she did.

Samuel Hutcherson was a wealthy shipping mogul. With fifteen contracted ports and a fleet of ships that rivaled the US Navy, his reach and influence was widespread and well known. What was not so well known, was that his company was flagged by the FBI and Homeland Security two years previous. There had been a raid in which- low and behold- guns, drugs, and Ecuadorian immigrants were found.

Rumor was, there had been a damning piece of evidence to implicate that Hutcherson was fully aware of the goings-on within the company. That piece of evidence disappeared a day after he picked up the phone and called an ‘old friend.’ It was a story Karen had been pulling strings at for almost a year.

“And you, what, wanna break into this asshole’s house and look for clues?”

“I don’t tell you how to shoot people.” His huff was the only reply. “We’re not headed to Samuel Hutcherson’s house. We’re headed to Wendy Chan’s,” she corrected indignantly.

“Who the hell is Wendy Chan?”

“She worked as an office evidence clerk for ten years until she retired a month ago.” Making a quick left turn Frank slowed to a stop a few houses back from their intended target.

The area was nice, nondescript. A suburb buried in a suburb, too far from the city but not far enough. Frank leaned over the wheel of their stolen car and checked for the house number that was displayed on her phone. It was a corner lot, the biggest he’d seen since entering suburbia. The lot was not the only biggest thing around either. The house was massive and looked particularly posh surrounded by the more modest homes it boasted for neighbors.

“The inside woman then,” he finally said, looking briefly at Karen for confirmation. She nodded.

“I couldn’t get Hutcherson, so I went looking for his contact in the FBI.” Negating to mention the hours buried in personnel files of everyone who have been involved in the case and the threat of a restraining order seemed the best option.

“What now?”

“Now, we case.”

What Karen really meant was more in the stakeout territory. They had to wait until Chan left before breaking into her home, making her word choice slightly incorrect. Frank seemed to enjoy this oversite.

“I ain’t complainin,’ just pointing out-“

“New rule, no talking in the car.”

“My car,” he corrected, voice gruff but amused. Karen turned to give him a look.

“Should I root through the glovebox and find out whose car it actually is?” She felt smug at proving her point.

“ _Root_ through?” The smugness vanished.

“She’s leaving,” not a moment too soon either. They had been sitting curb side for nearly two hours and she was getting claustrophobic.

Getting into the house was easy when Frank climbing through an open second story window. The crack also happened to negate the alarm. He opened the front door for her and closed it just as quickly, but not before he scanned the area for any witnesses to their B&E.

“What’re we lookin’ for Page?”

“Anything to tie her to a payoff.”

“The house ain’t enough proof…?” Frank mumbled under his breath, his eyebrow raising as Karen passed him an identical pair of plastic gloves to the ones she was pulling on.

They split up, being quiet for the benefit of hearing if Ms. Chan returned from her errand. Twenty minutes turned into an hour and still, Karen found nothing to tie the woman to tampering with evidence or taking a bribe. She was getting frustrated, annoyance mounting for having to endure sitting in the car for two hours with Frank Castle for nothing.

“Page,” it was a call to attention from Frank, just down the hall from her. Karen replaced the framed photo of Chan and an older Asian man she assumed was her father and spun quickly. She was headed towards the spare room when a bright glint shone through the window.

“Shit,” she cursed emphatically, ducking to the right of the window as a black Mercedes pulled into the driveway.

“Frank, we have to go!” Karen felt her heart triple in pace, mind whirling as she tried to think of an escape route that would avoid getting arrested. She peaked through the curtains and watched as a couple, in their mid-fifties and impeccably dressed, exited the car. Squinting a bit, the reporter thought he bore a striking resemblance to the man in Chan’s photo.

“Not sure if this is what you were lookin’ for. Guess we’ll figure that out later,” he was already ushering her down the stairs, body tense and pulled taut. Frank had just steered her out the back door as the sound of a key turning the tumblers in a lock resounded through the hallway. A second later the sound of door hinges followed. Frank clicked the sliding door into place and they disappeared around the back. The fence gate unlatched and lead into a dense thicket of trees.  

“What did you-“

“Shhh,” nostrils flared in annoyance, but she remained silent until they slipped back onto the sidewalk. Frank threw in arm over her shoulders, body falling back into a relaxed state. She was the one taut then, his physical contact disconcerting despite her knowledge it was to negate how suspicious they both probably looked.

They slipped into the car and were headed off down the quiet lane under the speed limit when Karen started to embrace the shaking in her limbs. Adrenaline coursed through her body like a poison. It was one she was intimately familiar with.

They sat in silence, Karen swiping her thumb absently over the flash drive Frank had found in the study seconds before they had to duck out the backdoor. The drive could contain anything. It could be Chan’s sex tape for all she knew. The couple she saw from the window stirred curiosity. The man had been the same one from the photos hung on the walls, but the woman was unfamiliar.

“You good?” His voice was gruff, Karen would say that he was still in ‘Marine Mode,’ still waiting for them to be tailed back to her apartment and ambushed. While she may have been familiar with adrenaline, Karen was half convinced Frank would bleed the stuff.

“Yeah,” elbow braced against the car door, fingers running through her hair, Karen turned and really looked at him. The man and all his rough edges, all his anger and rage and bitterness festering inside of him like a cancer.

And yet.

He was tense, not from a fight, not because he wanted to go back and put a bullet in their unexpected visitors. Frank was wired because she had been in danger. She’d seen it, felt it in the marrow of her god damn bones when Lewis’ arm had been wrapped around her shoulders. A human shield. Who she was shielding, she didn’t know. Anvil staff protected from the bomb that had pressed into her lower back, Lewis protected from losing the control of the situation he so desperately craved.

Frank Castle had looked her in the eye. For a moment bullet wounds, broken bones, and psychological trauma cleared from his gaze until there was nothing left but her. Fear, determination, concern, and something else she couldn’t quite name swam in his laser focused gaze. It was a memory so at odds with the first leg of their acquaintanceship.

She thought a lot about the first few months of their acquaintance. A young Karen Page with her heaping guilt and uncertain view of the world. Working as a paralegal, she’d been on the precipice of finding her life’s calling. Days when she was merely a cog in the machine that would help him unearth the murderous conspiracy that left him widowed and childless.

She was a tool: recognized, categorized, deployed, and discarded. Frank dangled her out in the world, a pretty little tackle strung on the end of his fishing rod. He hadn’t given a shit. For all he’d known at the time, they could have farmed out to a sniper, one clean headshot and the saga would have ended in spilled coffee and blood splatter.

There were days when she needed to crawl inside herself and believe, truly, that no one understood her, cared to, or ever could. The immediate evidence in opposition was Frank. He was the exception to more rules in her life than she had bones in her body.

 _Frank understands you_ it would say, indignant and grating. _He saw the darkness in you and accepted it._

She would scream back at it, asking why he would leave her behind if that was true. Sometimes it quieted with no response and she could wallow in her own constructed belief that there was no one who gave a shit.

Other times she saw red rimmed eyes with a gut-wrenching promise and determination coated in steel. Other times she heard five words in a ragged voice that silenced the racing thoughts in her head.

“What do you think is on it?” She hadn’t realized her gaze had stayed on him while her brain constructed a sketch of his past self to overlay atop the new version driving her back to the city.

“Why did you save me from Lewis Wilson?” The car nearly fish tailed as Frank jerked the wheel at her words.

“What the fuck kind of question is that?” Though he was attentive enough to the road ahead of him, Frank still managed to send the ugliest of glares her way.

“I just mean, it wasn’t your fight to find Lewis. Had nothing to do with your crusade, so why get involved?”

“You know why Karen,” his voice was low, gruff, angry. Something told her to push forward despite how illogical this line of inquiry was.

“Tell me,” she said instead.

“I wasn’t going to let that coward, asshole hurt you.” His voice rose, like it did the night by the river when he all but said what they were.

“You had no problem dangling me like a piece of meat for the Blacksmith and his cronies.” The sound he made was incredulous, shocked.

“They didn’t hurt you, they barely got near you,” it was an almost snooty tone and Karen leaned back in her seat at it. There was no malice in her next words, only genuine curiosity twanged with confusion.

“But they could have. You put me in front of a wall of windows. They could have put a bullet between my eyes before you finished your first sip of coffee. They could have sent an army to that diner, one could have slit my throat while you were busy fighting off the other twenty.”

“Do you have a god damn point?” If she’d considered his posture rigid before, her understanding of the word was off. Frank’s whole body was frozen, every muscle drawn in close, clenched for impact. It wouldn’t help prepare him for her next words.

“You didn’t give a shit if I lived or died then, would have let me bleed out if it helped your crusade. I guess I’m just wondering what made Lewis and his bomb any different from a drug kingpin and a wall of windows.”

The car reverberated with silence. There was a pulsing feeling, undertones built on the foundation of half truths and shaky comradery. Karen bit at her nail beds for a moment, just to do something. Turning, she looked through the front window at the winding country road that would soon morph into high-rises and concrete streets teeming with people.

Karen gasped as Frank slammed on the brakes. She flew forward in her seat. Pointing the car towards a pull off that lead to a back road, he spun the wheel and made a sharp right. They stopped twenty feet in before Frank threw the parking brake on and nearly ripped the keys from the ignition. He was throwing his door open before she could scream at him for his shitty driving.

Slamming the driver’s side shut, a ringing silence had her breathing hard. The pounding in her chest at the sudden move he’d made with the vehicle having nothing on the sharp rise in her chest at his expression. The air was static in the cab, sun rays lighting the particles lazily floating in and out of the beams. With no air conditioning, the heat prickled at the back of her neck along with the nervous awareness that she may have pushed to far.

Frank rounded the car with flushed cheeks, stalking to the passenger side before ripping the door open with force. The man was _heaving_ , eyes wild as he reached across her to unbuckle the seatbelt after a moment of obvious hesitation on her part. Any sound of protest was met with nothing more than a grunt while he crowded into her space. Karen huffed, slapping his hands away. She flew out of the car, stopping ten feet ahead at the dense tree line before rounding on him.

“What the actual _fuck_ Frank!” Hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, Frank did nothing but stare at her full on. The look he had was the same she’d been remembering early, the look right before he said those five words and she was bodily dragged into an elevator. The distance between them was eaten up in three long strides.

“You wanna check out, hole yourself up in your own head cuz’ you can’t deal with shit, that’s fine,” they were inches apart. “But you don’t drag me into your little pity party, you hear me?”

“My ‘pity party?’” Her voice rose, anger seeping into every word.

“Yeah,” he crowded her even more, Karen taking an instinctual step back. “That little ‘ _woe is me shit_ ,’ you do it on your own time, with your own psyche, you don’t go making shit up about me.”

“Believe it or not Frank, not everything is about you!” He leaned in, finger coming to hover just under her chin.

“You made this about me with whatever the fuck that was in the car Karen!”

“I just asked you a question,” she corrected indignantly.

“Like fuck you did!”

It was back, that spark of _something_ in her chest. Instead of sputtering out after only a few second though, it was only stoked by the trembling in her limbs, the look in his eyes. For the first time in months, she felt that fire raging in her chest.

Fuck flight, she was choosing fight. Frank Castle had no idea what he’d just gotten himself into.


	5. Interlude of the Psyche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are these things, they give context, but fuck if they weren't the most complicated set of a problems Karen had ever dealt with.

Normal. That was the word that had plagued her household. They were the quintessential _normal_ family on the block. A little family, living in a little town, in a little state. They wanted that for themselves. They wanted to be picture perfect.

The bruises on her skin, under her cloths, they were normal too. That’s what brothers did when their sisters got out of hand, when they yelled or cried or cowered. It was punishment pure and simple. Selective ignorance from their parents was normal. In fact, it solidified his behavior as it was- expected, approved, unequivocally acceptable.

It was what she saw as the penultimate state- to be blissfully normal. Her sense of that word was, of course, tainted beyond recognition. Sixteen years old and it crossed her mind that maybe, _just maybe_ , not going to school because of the black eye she’d been given wasn’t okay. They were angry people, violent people, and she did not deserve the black eyes and broken ribs.

But violence breeds violence.

_Careless, Karen! You were careless!_

Careless was what she let herself believe, let the world believe. She was nineteen when she murdered her brother. Everyone said it was an accident, a careless accident.

 _She must have not been paying attention to the road!_ They said. _You know, I heard a deer darted out in front of the care._ They would parrot it like a song back to their busy body friends in their busy body sewing circles. False innocence was easy. Sweet, normal, blond hair, blue eyed Karen Page was nothing more than a tragic story for dangers of road hazards.

Wrapping the car she was driving around a tree at 60 miles per hour wasn’t an accident. No deer or moment of distraction was necessary to facilitate the fatal car crash. No need for anything but the lack of will to live and boiling rage.

It was just too much. All of it was just too much. It boiled and roiled in her stomach until there was nothing but a cloud of burning hatred for everyone and everything. The feelings scared her, terrified her, when they crept in for a moment, only to retreat back.

Like a tidal wave washing forward, crashing onto the shore, it drowned out anything else. Happiness, contentedness, normalcy, none of it could breathe under the oppressive weight of it. But then, then it would recede. Escaping back into the ocean it was born of, there was nothing but destruction in its wake. The shores of her mind were laden with terror, self-loathing, and shame.

The shame is what incapacitated her.

At that moment, eyes glued to the great oak less than a mile in front of her, she had been underwater. Drowning in a sea of torrent emotions made the decision simple. It was a relief really, when the sound of shattering glass and twisting metal masked the sound of his voice, seething with anger.

A boy had kissed her that night.

Everyone knew sweet, normal, blond haired, blue eyed Karen Page was off-limits. Her brother was big and mean and protective (it wouldn’t be until she was older, reading about serial killers, psychopaths, and belligerents that she would learn the correct word was _possessive_ not _protective_ ).

For all the abuse he had laid upon her, it was never like that. He had hit her, screamed at her, slapped her in the face, bruised a rib, but he’d never touched her the way he had that night. Like a lightening bolt, bright, brilliant, and searing her from the inside out, she knew. Whether it had always been in his head, or was only a development born of her development, she couldn’t guess.

The end result was the same. The abuse was going to change. The coping mechanisms she had would be useless in the light of that kind of violation. The nightmares she had about him would evolve. The ability to function in society would be cut. The coasting through life way of surviving wouldn’t work for this.

So, she pressed down on the gas, tilted the wheel _just so_ to the left, and let her body sag in relief. Karen didn’t close her eyes, didn’t release the wheel to miss the moment in happened. Like a welcomed friend, she was open and ready for the impact. Looking into the void, only for it to look back.

How she survived, no one knew. Some called it a miracle, her parents called it a cruel twist of fate. She’d left for New York less than twelve hours after she was released from the hospital. They had screamed at her, on the way to the hospital, at the hospital, during her stay, during her exams, in the car on the way home.

_Careless! You were careless and you killed your own brother, Karen!_

For some reason, she’d always had this mental image of herself, blood in her teeth, smile wide. She wished the visual would have been real. Wished she would have greeted her parents with a mouth full of blood and eyes full of vindictive pleasure. Instead, she faded in and out of consciousness as EMTs took her away.

In some ways, never having seen his body had been a blessing. Mostly, it was just a curse. She had wanted to know, for certain, with her own eyes, that he was dead. She’d wanted it so badly. After waking up, Karen had asked a nurse if she could go to the morgue to _say goodbye to my brother_. They’d looked at her with a mix of sympathy and blame before telling her he had been taken to the funeral home already. It had felt fast, until they told her she’d been unconscious for eight days.

She missed the funeral. From what she could work out, it would have been the same day she started work as a waitress at a low-budget diner on the outskirts of Brooklyn. It had been a good, if not slightly morbid, day.

Nineteen years old and so much tragedy. So much baggage to carry around. She marveled sometimes, at how much like a cancer it was. There were good days, and there were decidedly, _not_ good days. Her eyes to what life was supposed to look like, could be like, had been blown wide open.

Celeste was promiscuous and insecure. Compensating for her lack of self-confidence by adoring people or demeaning them. Karen, she had adored, and then later demeaned. Never having had coworkers before, the fellow waitress moved from colleague to best friend in a matter of weeks.

The world was brand new, shiny (but somehow still dingy, it was Brooklyn after all) and oh so inviting. Partying, alcohol, drugs, sex. It was unknown and unfamiliar. The world ate her alive.

Ben had taken her virginity when she was twenty on nothing but a whim. She had a thing, about men touching her, but there was enough vodka in her system that she could have been named a Russian citizen. Waking up the next morning with an ache between her legs and a not so subtle dismissal hadn’t sent her into a tailspin like she thought it would.

What she had been craving was control, power, over herself and others. When drugs couldn’t give her that, she moved on to sex. Karen Page got good at it, used her unassuming manor to her advantage, and hurt a lot of people. Like brother like sister- she just didn’t need fists to inflict brokenness.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

He’d dreamt about her. Flashing away from the never-ending collage of his family, blond hair and bright blue eyes would haunt him in fitful sleep. Sometimes it was only a second, a half breath that left confusion in its wake. But sometimes, it was much, much worse.

The pain of loss, the shame, the guilt, for what had happened to his family was never ending and impossibly deep, but it had aged. He had sucked the marrow out of its bones, leaving himself and the well-worn maelstrom of emotions, hollow.

Then, something new overlaid the old. He watched as the clean lines of a pressed pencil skirt and artfully tucked blouses were torn and dirtied. Watched as blue eyes became cold and vacant. Watched bright, sunny blond hair turned red on the floor of a hotel kitchen.

Shooting up in bed, he felt his heart race with a feeling he knew but had been distant from for so long- urgency.

Karen Page was living. Karen Page was a phone call away. If he had risen and stalked to his van it would have taken him less than fifteen minutes to make it to her apartment. Less than two to get up her fire escape, and less than one to tap against her window until she ambled sleepily out of her bedroom.

The thing about living with ghosts was stagnation. They stayed the same, looked the same, were the same. They were always there, just waiting to be picked up again, like a polaroid with well worn edges, his family was ghosts.

Karen though, Karen was a fucking firebrand. She raced through his veins, urged him out of bed and out the door before he could collect himself enough to slam the door shut and crawl back to his mattress. There were still mistakes to be made, still failures to commit. The military had taught him to quell the feeling, but he hadn’t been a Marine for a long time.

It was not for a lack of trying on his part, but nothing he did erased the feeling of inadequacy, of failure and fear that plagued his waking hours. Eyes snapping open with her name on his lips was becoming the normative, not the exception, so he kept his distance.

Because at the end of the day, Frank Castle loved too hard. Even when he was a kid, for all his bluster and trouble making and rebel rousing, he just really fucking loved people. Kurtis, Billy, his mother, his wife, and his girl and his boy.

It wasn’t an often occurrence, and maybe it was rarity of it that made it so real, so intense. Because Frank Castle didn’t just love people, he _owned_ them. Once they were in him, their happiness, their safety, their lives became his to protect, his improve, his to monitor and evaluate. He had owned Maria and the kids like he’d never owned anything, but then they were taken from him.

Karen was different. Karen couldn’t be owned. She was brave, and strong, and so god damn stubborn, you couldn’t pin her down even if you wanted to. He had tried to own her, and she had refused. Walking away that night in the woods, pushing back on him when he put distance between them, she fought him at every turn. No matter how he tried to reiterate that he was bad for her, she didn’t listen.

But despite all of it, despite her absolute refusal to be owned, he owned her anyway. No one went after her, because no one got passed him. Watching from a distance, he allowed a hands-off approach to keep him warm at night. Just knowing she was safe, physically unharmed was enough.

Then she’d fucked some executive in a pent house on the supposed right side of town.

It wasn’t jealousy that drove him to her that night, it was frustration. He knew about Murdock before she’d broken her mug in the kitchen sink. Karen Page was strong, but there had been a shift in her since the kid’s death that made her unrecognizable. On the outside, nothing changed, but she was just like him- hollow. She’d become a doll, stuffed with straw, with a painted on smile, dressed up to play a part.

She played it well. Its how he knew she was dying inside.

Rooftop surveillance wasn’t enough. There was this hole in her chest born of a past he didn’t know about and a recent loss that was too much to bear. He knew the other lawyer had tried to reach her, but the wool had been pulled over his eyes early on. Whether it was from not wanting to see it or actual ignorance he didn’t know. Regardless, she needed someone to pull her out of her own head. Looking around, he found himself the only candidate.

So he’d pushed. He’d used Murdock’s name that night, eyes trained on her back as she moved skittishly around her kitchen. He’d held her in the shower as it all came crashing down. He’d broken into a stranger’s house on nothing but her word.

And now, now he was going to watch as pale blue eyes lit up for the first time in months. Fire and brimstone upon his head, it didn’t matter- as long as she was alive. Looking at her the past few months was like staring at her body on slab in the morgue, and he wouldn’t allow that, not while he was breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUCK YOU PUNISHER SEASON 2. FUCK YOU.  
> I digress.


	6. Detonation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wanted her raw enough to see, whole enough to touch.

She was breathing hard, lungs screaming for oxygen despite how much they already contained, air crystal clear. Not surprising, they were on the outskirts of the city. The backroad he’d pulled onto was a simple thing. Dirt and gravel mixed together, making some sort of traction for the tires. Someone meandering down it seemed slight.

“You put me in front of a wall of windows.”

“Don’t go startin’ this shit with me-“

“What, what Frank? You think I don’t see it?” She was inches away, body vibrating in anger. “You think I don’t see what you’re doing?”

“What am I doing Page?” His posture was ramrod straight, spine in perfect alignment, eyes on fire. It solidified the ugly thing in her soul, like lava calcifying into obsidian.

“I’m not a child who needs protecting Frank!”

“Then stop actin’ like one.”

“Fuck you, Frank.” Turning on her heel, the gravel crunched under the boots she rarely wore.

“You think I drove my ass out here because I don’t give a shit whether you live or die?”

“That’s not what I-“

“Because that would be a hell of a thing to do for someone I didn’t give a shit about.”

“So what?” Arms flung out to the side, the reported looked as incredulous as she felt. “Somewhere between ‘stay away from me’ and ‘thanks Karen’ you started to give a shit?”

“You-“ she cut him off, charging ahead.

“I what, Frank? I’m useful to you? Because if that’s the reason you you’re here, you can get the fuck out of my life.”

“Oh, here we go. Play martyr all you want Karen-” “ _Martyr_!?” “But don’t play dumb blond with me.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means!” It rose, his voice, echoing through the empty space around them, bridging the mere inches between them. There was something in his eyes, the same thing that was there the first night she called him Mr. Castle and scared the living shit out of him. Terrifying, that’s what it was, absolutely terrifying. For him or for her, she still wasn’t entirely sure.  

The thing about numbness, she realized, was that it was a fuck ton easier to cope with than the raging tide it held back. There was a Pandora’s box in her chest, opened for merely a second the night she lost her shit in the bathroom, peeking open just a crack in that moment with a murderer on a deserted back road.

Frank would break through it, like he broke through bone and convention. He would shatter the only thing keeping her from bleeding out, like removing the knife from her chest that kept pressure on the wound. For all its fucking downsides, it kept her alive, kept her functioning. Staring at him then, feelings licking up her spine like flames, she made a choice.

There were things she could say, one card left to play that was always in her back pocket. She held it close. It was a trump card, she knew that. It would irrevocably change their relationship, drive a wedge between them she didn’t think would ever be removed. As much as her self-destructive tendencies screamed at her to do it, it was a smaller voice, meek and often ignored, that pushed her to say it.

When it came out, it was Doubt that wrapped her tongue around the words.

“I’m not Maria,” the moment it was out of her mouth, he jerked back like she’d slapped him. “I’m not Lisa, or Frank Jr. You can’t atone for you perceived failures by saving me. You think I need to be saved, Frank? You’re right. But I can promise you, I moved far beyond saving a lifetime ago.” There was a flash, Karen would’ve called it betrayal. There one moment and gone the next.

“You don’t bring them into this,” it was a warning, low and angry, and so unlike any tone he’d ever used with her before.

“They’re in everything you do Frank, there’s no way for them not to be in this.” Shaking her head, the lava had cooled completely, leaving nothing but a hard shell in its wake. “I can’t be an after for you Frank,” the echo back seemed to blindside him. “I’m not human enough to be anything for anyone.”

There was something about loving a damaged man, in any capacity, that could just make you a doormat. Not everyone, some people put boundaries in place and loved with a healthy respect for the harm he could inflict. Some people loved from afar, he was a raging fire and getting too close would result in third degree burns.

Karen was really good at the first one. She loved to be right up in it, engulfed in the flames, feeling the heat on her skin and the sweat beading at her brow. But now, now she was channeling the second because she had to. The fire would burn away every protective measure she’d thrown up inside her head and chest. The ones that kept her safe from the pain born from giving a shit.

“That what all this is ‘bout?” The step he’d taken back at his passed wife’s name was made up in a second. “You hidin’ it so well you can’t remember where you put it?”

“Put what Frank?” Despite the tiredness marring the words, eyes shone bright with interest.

“Your god damn soul, Karen,” he said it like it was some sort of revelation, some profound statement of enlightenment. She snorted. She laughed in his face.

“I haven’t had a soul in years, Frank.”

There were things that she’d done, horrible, psychotic, unforgivable things. But really, it was all the things she _hadn’t_ do. The people she passed on the sidewalk, women with black eyes and broken ribs. It was the homeless people she didn’t give a second thought to, the dead she barely batted an eye at.

It was the hypocrisy of everything she’d said to Matt before he was buried under a building. It was the lack of guilt she had for killing Wesley, but the absolute, bone-deep grief at killing the boy who had abused her, her whole life. Karen may have done some shit, but she had done a lot less than she should have.

“You think I got a soul?” The question was calculating, indifferent, his eyes placid.

“Can’t answer that Frank.”

“Because I won’t like the answer?”

“Because I don’t think anyone but you can answer a question like that.”

Eyes were searching her own, a narrowed look that felt like his attempt at telepathy. Something about the way he shifted into her space, arms tense at his sides, made her almost nervous. She didn’t want him peering into the empty cavity inside her to find nothing there but dust and silence.

“Get in the car.” With that command, he side-stepped her and headed straight for the driver’s seat.

Blinking rapidly, Karen felt something like relief mixed with bone crushing rejection and disappointment sucker punch her in the gut. Short of breath, her blue eyes refocused on the view Frank’s body had been blocking during their confrontation. Hands clenched, unclenched, clenched. Sucking in a shaky breath, she felt tears burn her eyes.

This was what she wanted, right? To be detached from him and his shield shattering fire? So why did it feel like the only human being alive that could possibly understand her, confirmed she was a fucking lost cause?

“Get in the car Karen.” There was nothing to be done but obey.

Not a single word was spoken on their car ride back. It was an hour of agonizing silence, eyes trying to catch her gaze only for her to pointedly stare out the window. He never tried to break the silence, attention on the road ahead of them with barely an audible breath. Head falling into her hand, she leaned against the window, trying to put as much distance between them as was able in such a small space.

When they pulled up to her apartment, she was out the door before they had rolled to a complete stop. She didn’t need to turn around, she heard the car driving away. Karen didn’t stop moving until her front door was slammed shut, hand over her mouth as tears streamed from the corners of her eyes.

_Careless! You’re so careless Karen!_

The sobs were ugly, ragged things. Scraping out of her throat, nails ripping gentle flesh until there was nothing left but a bloodied mess. The floor greeted her knees, cheap laminate made to look like hardwood unmoved by the breakdown happening in her own fucking entryway.

It was everything she had been looking to lock up tight between the slats of her ribs. It was grief, and rage, and helplessness. Matt flashed before her eyes, Ellison’s face as he told her about Ben, Wesley’s shocked eyes fading to black. A car, a hospital room, a couple absolutely beside themselves that she lived. _Karen_ got to live – worthless, meaningless, careless Karen.

Every scumbag whose name she dragged through the mud, every dead body she examined, every moment of trauma, obvious and elusive, came floating through like the fucking Rose Parade. Balloons in the shape of devil masks and totaled cars flying above an army of nameless, faceless people demanding her attention.

Then there was him. Like a fucking sledgehammer to her face, he was there. From the moment she laid eyes on him in that hospital bed to the calculating cold look he had given her an hour ago, he was there. White skulls pained her vision, angry dark eyes and a crooked nose. Bearded and clean shaven. The moments he made her feel, in every single fiber of her being, that she was worth something, that there was more to her than just a tool to be used and discarded.

 _He needed a name, Karen_.

But there was also that feeling, creeping around the corner, black eyes peering and a twisted smile. The voice of Doubt came raging back. He had confirmed every horrible, terrifying thought she’d ever had about them. Just another tool to be used and discarded.

_This isn’t a game, Karen!_

Matt’s voice rang out in the hollow space of her apartment, even as her mind conjured images of shrapnel embedded in an arm, bullet graze bleeding from the temple.

_This is a bad idea, Matt._

Foggy’s voice, a recently vacated public defender, Reyes breathing down their necks. They had made so many bad decisions, and Karen had pushed them right down the path. Would Matt be alive? Would Avocados at Law still be practicing, instead of a chipped sign outside a building? Karen didn’t regret helping Frank, could never regret it, but it was just another in a long line of choices that ruined lives. That’s what she did after all, she ruined lives.

She couldn’t breathe, her chest heaving so hard, Karen swore she had fractured a rib. It hurt, sucking in oxygen and spitting it back out on chocked sobs. Crumbling, falling, ground into dust. There was nothing left of her.

_Or just leave my ass in wind!_

It was his voice now, angry for hesitating a moment, debating the choice of handing a name to a serial killer. He had told her she could say ‘no’ but he knew her better than that. One way or another, he would have gotten Karen’s help. That’s what he always needed from her. His refusals only made her insist. She wondered idly how long he’d known that about her, how quickly he realized manipulating her was as easy as being a stubborn asshole.

The room was spinning, her eyes open but sightless, tears blurring out the room until there was nothing left but disjointed shapes. Hand to her chest, Karen clutched at the material of her shirt, grasping the fabric and pulling it over her head. Maybe it was just the collar of her shirt, the pressure from the cotton restricting her airflow.

Crawling further into her living room in nothing but a bra and jeans, she felt like screaming. Just opening up her mouth, sightless, senseless screaming until she could never make a sound again, until she didn’t have to. It was too much; Pandora’s box had been opened and there was no way to close it.

She made it as far as her kitchen’s island, back hitting cold plaster. Hands burrowing under blond hair, she clamped them tight over her ears. The voices were too loud, screaming at her from all directions. They called for her blood, for her confession, for whatever was left of her and she couldn’t do this.

_She couldn’t. she couldn’t. she couldn’t._

_Panic attack_

The words filtered through her mind, but they seemed implausible. She’d never experienced one herself, the bruising tight control she had over every emotion prevented it. Or as someone had told her once, there was too much pride running through her veins.

Murdering her brother and nearly herself hadn’t brought one on. Shooting a man seven times hadn’t brought one on. Matt’s death. Ben’s death. Fisk. Nearly being strangled in a cell. Daniel’s blood covering her whole body. Nothing, nothing could touch the overwhelming feeling of _all of it, every single thing_ all at once.

Maybe she needed to see a shrink.

Black dots filtered into her vision just as the front door opened. Well, not opened – when her front door flew off its hinges, wood splintering and flying like shrapnel into her apartment. A blurry silhouette coming right at her was the last thing she saw before the dots melted together to block out her sight entirely.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

“I’m ditchin’ the car. I’ll–” the passenger side door slammed shut before he could finish his damn sentence. An aggravated growl made its way up his throat, eye twitching. His gaze followed her form until the front door of her apartment building shut behind her.

Pulling the gearshift into drive, Frank stared resolutely ahead. If he were someone else, he might’ve been offended by her valiant attempts to push him over the edge. He’d used those same tactics, finding someone’s weak spot and going for the soft tissue. Her battle was within her own self, she just happened to be bleeding out all over those closest to her.

Who was left in that category, though? Murdock was dead, the other lawyer kid was a missed dinner date away from being a long distance relative. Karen worked too hard, kept her head down at the office. She had their respect, but never their loyalty, never their friendship.

The woman was a god damn island, and she’d done it to herself.

Frank knew that ploy. Really, he knew all her ploys, because he’d used them first. Trying to distance yourself from people because it was easier than trying to sort through the shit show that was simply existing after fuck all destroyed you was his MO.

He didn’t need to do what he did in the diner. He knew that. He knew dangling her like bait was risky, but it was worth it, at the time. Karen had been special from the moment they met, but she hadn’t been special to Frank. Not enough to stop his crusade, to get between him and his mission to kill everyone who played a role in murdering his family.

As much as Frank was pissed at her words in the car, he knew she wasn’t wrong. If Karen would’ve asked that question on a different day, with a different tone, he would’ve told her the truth. That day, he’d cared if she lived or died, just not enough to walk away from the bullshit reigning down on all of them.

What she was really asking, what she had been asking herself for months now, was if _she_ cared if she lived or died.

He had asked himself that question a thousand times after the fact. His mission was complete, they were dead, his family could rest in peace, so what did he care if he died in a ditch somewhere? Frank Castle, husband, father, marine, best friend of Billy Russo – that man, that man was six feet under a carousel in the park.

So was Karen Page. He just didn’t know where the body was buried.

Trauma fucked with people in different ways. It was delayed, it was compacting. There was nothing for it but allow it to swallow you whole. You had to kick for the surface with as much force as you could and just keep at it until you figured out which was up. Water in your lungs, eyes stinging, you had to keep yourself moving. Karen was tumbling around in the waves like a god damn six year-old without floaties.

Karen just didn’t give a fuck anymore.

Dumping the car six blocks over, he did a cursory wipe down of her side and his. The car was stolen six times over, but it never hurt to be cautious. Stuffing his hands into the front pocket of his jacket, hood pulled tight around his face, he began the trek back to his apartment.

Blond hair and blue eyes, desperate for distance, flashed through his mind. There was something about her words that’d struck a chord in him, something angry and volatile jumping to the surface in defense of his actions. He had no need to justify himself, he just never thought he would’ve needed to justify himself to Karen Page. There was an understanding between them, unspoken and probably not healthy, but an understanding none the less.

Those were the days he was more mission than man, when he had nothing in him but an inferno of grief and rage. Frank Castle died at the carousel, the Punisher dragging his writhing corpse from the grave to enact vengeance masqueraded as justice. Or was it the other way around?

She had always known what he was, nothing he did seemed to change her mind about the lost cause who sat handcuffed to a table, bruised and bloodied. It was why he knew their spat had little to do with him. Frank wasn’t the only corpse reanimated in this fucking city.

Making it up to her building, he slipped the key into the lock on the building’s door. Taking the stairs two at a time, he planned his next course of action. The spark in her was the most fire he’d seen in months and it made him grip that wire more firmly, like Lewis and his god damn bomb. Except this time, he wanted the detonation. The one thing about a bomb that people forget, was how it burned away the artificial. In its wake was the rawest from of whatever didn’t move fast enough.

That’s what Frank wanted. He wanted Karen stripped bare to her soul, raw and exposed. Maybe then he could find what was broken in her.

He heard it before making it to the front door. They were ugly, soul shattering, and he felt his legs move faster of their own accord. Reaching her door, he bypassed knocking altogether. One hand pressed into the wood, the other fidgeting with her apartment keys, he finally slid the metal into the lock.

With a slight click, the lock disengaged. He felt determination flood him. Huffing loudly, he shouldered the door open. The sounds were even worse without the protection of the door between them. The deadbolt engaged, leaving only a crack for him to see her through.

“Karen?” He tried to keep it low, concern marked but the hallway too open. He tried again, louder. “Karen, open the god damn door!” It was a crescendo, her breathing too shallow, too quick. The words filtered through his mind, memories flashing back to soldiers in the field, eyes wide but unseeing.

_Panic attack_

Fuck. And he thought _he_ was the one on the verge. She was out of reach. She was going to hurt herself.

 _Karen was hurt_.

Something alive and ferocious roared in his chest. The thought, the _mere fucking thought_ that Karen was just sitting there in her own hell made it impossible to breathe. Karen, _his Karen_ and all her stubbornness and bravery and fortitude was hyperventilating on her kitchen floor while Frank stood outside, three feet away, like an asshole.

Fuck. That.

He’d broken down few doors in his life. The war hadn’t afforded him much in the way of kicking doors in. There was something spectacular about watching wood ripped from its hinges, a casualty of his rage and determination. Frank savored those moments, but he barely noticed a god damn thing because when that door was open, the only thing he saw was blue and gold. The only thing he saw was the one thing in the entire god damn world he gave a shit about.

He was on his knees in front of her in a blink. Seconds before she hit the ground, his arms wound around her waist, soft shushing on his lips. 


End file.
